low tone.

"Will you give me a few hours for consideration?"

"I am only too happy that you should accord it consideration, for it
speaks to me of hope," was his reply, as he opened the door for her to
pass out. "I will be here again this afternoon."

It was a perplexing debate that Lady Isabel held with herself in the
solitude of her chamber, whilst Mr. Carlyle touched upon ways and means
to Lady Mount Severn. Isabel was little more than a child, and as a
child she reasoned, looking neither far nor deep: the shallow palpable
aspect of affairs alone presenting itself to her view. That Mr. Carlyle
was not of rank equal to her own, she scarcely remembered; East Lynne
seemed a very fair settlement in life, and in point of size, beauty and
importance, it was far superior to the house she was now in. She forgot
that her position in East Lynne as Mr. Carlyle's wife would not be what
it had been as Lord Mount Severn's daughter; she forgot that she would
be tied to a quiet house, shut out from the great world, the pomps
and vanities to which she was born. She liked Mr. Carlyle much; she
experienced pleasure in conversing with him; she liked to be with him;
in short, but for that other ill-omened fancy which had crept over her,
there would have been danger of her falling in love with Mr. Carlyle.
And oh! to be removed forever from the bitter dependence on Lady Mount
Severn--East Lynne would in truth, after that, seem what she had called
it: Eden.

"So far it looks favorable," mentally exclaimed poor Isabel, "but there
is the other side of the question. It is not only that I do not love Mr.
Carlyle, but I fear I do love, or very nearly love, Francis Levison. I
wish _he_ would ask me to be his wife!--or that I had never seen him."

Isabel's soliloquy was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Levison and
the countess. What the latter had said to the old lady to win her to the
cause, was best known to herself, but she was eloquent in it. They both
used every possible argument to induce her to accept Mr. Carlyle: the
old lady declaring that she had never been introduced to any one she was
so much taken with, and Mrs. Levison was incapable of asserting what was
not true; that he was worth a dozen empty-headed men of the great world.

Isabel listened, now swayed one way, now the other, and when afternoon
came, her head was aching with perplexity. The stumbling block that she
could not get over was Francis Levison. She saw Mr. Carly